#strike authorization

[archaalen]

Here's the union's website discussing their strike authorization:

If you love Disney, its parks, its media, and its merch, listen up.

So I work for Disneyland, and we are talking about striking very soon. So soon, in fact, that we've been hosting rallies just outside of the parks. Yesterday was the 69th birthday of Disneyland Anaheim... it was also a monumental rally.

I haven't seen anyone on tumblr talking about the impending strikes against Disney. Not even going through the Disney tags or searching tumblr for "Disneyland Strike."

Let's talk about why we're striking:

Cost of living in the immediate SoCal region is nearly 2x as much as we are getting paid.

Cast members that have worked for the company for long periods of time are still paid as mucha s new hires.

Disney has showed up to union negotiations with insulting offers, including at 25 cent raise. Most cast members make $19.90

Disney rarely schedules you. In some areas and departments, you are fighting with your fellow cast members for hours. I have heard of cast members who are only scheduled for 1 4-hour shift per week. Many of those cast members have upwards of an hour commute to and from work.

Disney Admin has told attractions castmembers [so: rides, rollercoasters, and anything fun you get to do and see at the parks] that we are losing them money, which is why they refuse to schedule us and pay us. In the words of my partner, who also works at the parks, Disney without attractions is an over glorified mall and a food court. Disney needs us, and they know it, but they do not respect us.

Disney has an unfair attendance policy. It can be very difficult to get a needed day off, even when it has been requested weeks or months in advance. When you do take a day off [with-out accrued sick or vacation time] it counts against you. You can have 3 a month, 6 in 90 days, 9 in 180 days, or 12 in a year. How do you accrue sick/vacation? Hours worked, which can be impossible with the scheduling practices mentioned above. (Most cast members trade shifts among themselves to get around this.)

Cast members feel unsafe and unsupported in the parks. Many cast members have felt threatened by entitled guests upset that they are following policy. Disney Leads and Managers have to say yes to these guests and make things happen, though. [Which only makes this behavior worse and more dangerous for cast members who are only doing their job.]

Cast members also report feeling threatened, or even being literally threatened, by management in the parks. Especially cast members who have a second job. Especially cast members who know their rights.

Further, cast members work in hazardous conditions with pay that does not reflect that. Many cast members report losses of hearing, sore throats, and severe back and shoulder pain. Cast members are also exposed to infectious diseases at a much higher rate.

https://www.sfgate.com/disneyland/article/union-button-contract-dispute-19515296.php?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR2u5o_mvU3i6jpIyHxBUZpEzD2GRSKFf5Pem4uRXqa6vKWDgZuffvINd1g_aem_AA1L0fI1phugJIluYMcDSw

[vvitchllng]

Brennan really said here is an absolute nightmare of a prison industrial complex perpetuated by a guy who has coined himself the Strife Emperor, bent on using people who disagreed with him or his agenda (or simply people he and his underlings needed to make an example of) to the absolute limit of their “usefulness” to further his goals and supplement the war he was waging elsewhere. It is a devastatingly brutal place that allows for those given a modicum of privilege and power to turn around and enact vicious cruelty on the ones seen as beneath them, designed intentionally to destroy their ability to hope or dream of a better future and it has been this way for years and years.

It was brought down by creatures considered so small and weak as to be insignificant, who, by working together for as long as it took, found the cracks in the foundations and brought down a seemingly impenetrable stone fortress.

*looks directly at the camera* Which Could Mean Nothing.

[aquitainequeen]

Alarm bells being rung by Maureen Johnson on AI and the Big Publishers

[artisimpossible]

I keep seeing posts talking about the WGA/Sag-Aftra strike, which yes, good, but in all this "support writers" sentiment I'm seeing no one talk about book writers, which I think is something people should know more about right now.

We are at an all-time high for book bans, namely targeting queer & PoC-authored books. This means that a lot of schools and libraries are no longer stocking diverse YA books, and if you're not in publishing, you may not realize this but school & libraries are by far one of the biggest markets for diverse YA books.

This means that in 2023, YA book sales are down. This is also in part because Barnes & Noble (the largest physical book retailer in the U.S.) is no longer really stocking YA hardcovers. This means that marginalized authors and debut authors are struggling to sell books.

But it's a LOT worse than that. In the past couple of years, marginalized authors are *really* struggling to get new book deals. Most books are acquired by a publisher about 2 years before they release to the public, so this isn't all that noticeable yet, but a LOT of marginalized authors I've spoken to (myself included) have been unable to sell a new YA book since 2020. So while I had a book out last year, even if I sell one right now, you won't see it until 2025-2026. That's three to four years without a new release or the income I get from publishing those books.

On top of that, Big 5 publishers have started closing imprints (namely their diverse imprints) and have started telling their marginalized YA authors to just go. I've had multiple authors tell me their publisher basically said, "eh, we don't care to put in the work for you anymore. You can just go somewhere else". Of the authors who *are* getting offered new contracts, we're being offered pay far below the cost of living and we're being handed contracts that split our payments 4 or 5 ways and require we sign over our work to be used to train AI so they can replace us a few years down the road.

Authors are freelancers who own our IPs, which means we can't unionize the way Hollywood writers can, and despite authors showing up in droves to support HarperCollins employees when they went on strike for fair wages, we're being hung out to dry when it comes to our own rights.

If you enjoy diverse books, especially diverse YA, please understand that many of the authors you loved over the past 3-5 years are being forced out of the industry. We're being exploited, and we have no way to defend ourselves. Our books sales are drying up thanks to anti-queer legislation, our rights are being eaten up by AI, and our publishers are degrading us while profiting of us and refusing to share those profits with us.

Within the publishing industry, we've all been watching this decline happen over the last decade, but outside of it, I know most people have no idea what's going on so please spread the word. And if you care about diverse books especially in YA, please support marginalized authors in any way you can. The industry needs to be reminded that it needs us before we're all eliminated from it.

[shelfperson]

i am literally losing it people

[sparrowhawksshadow]

I think book 4 of the Masquerade series will be titled The Butcher Baru Cormorant. Here is my reasoning:

Every book title so far follows the same format of a name with strongly negative connotations: Traitor, Monster, Tyrant

“Butcher” in politics and history usually connotes excessive and shocking violence. However, book 3 uses it differently, in the question “How do you butcher an empire?” Meaning, how do you render it down into usable component parts? That is, how do you destroy an unjust system and use the pieces to nourish something better, rather than creating chaos and rot?

Part of Baru’s scheme for overthrowing Falcrest’s regime involves an alliance marriage which -- for complex cultural gender-politics reasons -- requires her to adopt a more masculine presentation: that is, she literally has to become butch-er

[lewyn-martell]

.

[1001galaxygal]

It’s so interesting to hear what mokumokuren was intending with the hand in chest scene! I think the themes of the story come through excellently. “Difficult to accept” in the sense of Hikaru’s death and yoshiki’s sexuality. It’s a bit genius I fear

[reality-detective]

International Longshoremen Association President Harold Daggett on the Port Strike:

“I will cripple you and you have no idea what that means, nobody does.”

It's going to get real folks, this is NOT a drill, it's NOT a time to procrastinate 🤔

[mirrorofliterature]

'I will take your argument in good faith only if you align with me in this misinterpretation of the text' is an interesting approach to take ngl

anyway, textually, attachment includes love. they are not 1:1, of course, but the jedi certainly forbid 'love'. anakin is being tongue-in-cheek and bending the rules when he defines compassion as 'unconditional love' in response to padme's 'wait, isn't love forbiden' [look, I'm explicitly referencing the text and not some random 2007 george lucas interview], and here 'love', in anakin's statement, is used in the more general sense (e.g. love for human kind) not love in the prohibited sense (e.g. for a person, like a spouse or your mother).

the PT movies - the canonical text - do not define attachment, but it is heavily implied and a part of the movies that, as part of the ban on attachment, they forbid loving interpersonal relationships such as familial and spousal relationships.

so like.

pro jedi fans.

sure, in your ideal fantasy world using strung-together sentences from george lucas, who is notoriously inconsistent in his worldbuilding (luke and leia kiss anyone?), attachment takes on the buddhist meaning.

but stop fooling yourself - and trying to fool everyone else - that the PT jedi order does not ban 'love', on a personal scale, under the umbrella of attachment, because then the whole movies kind of crumble (then why was anakin asked to forget his mother? I don't think fearing for your mother's LIFE is unhealthy attachment, particularly when she's enslaved, FFS, he did actually leave her, y'know, crucial part of TPM).

pro jedi fans: it's in the text!

me, scanning the movie scripts: yeah you're full of shit. where did you get this, AO3?

padme: 'jedi aren't allowed to marry'. falling in love is forbidden... because attachment... yadda yadda ya... yoda's literally says 'missing and mourning people is attachment', that's a normal sign of grief, that's not unhealthy at all under normal circumstances

I'm tired, y'all. the movies do not go into detail about jedi philosophy and so, of course, by nature we infer it and have different interpretations, but straight up stating things like 'attachment doesn't mean this' when it's straight up never defined in the movies, but by implication and necessity clearly includes love... smh.

[bsptourist]

dm_hangumhigh

created by Adiemus

[dyinggirldied]

Undereage Superheroes On The Rise: A Morally and Ethically Cause of Concern?

It's supposed to be another clickbait news but it comes at the time when the existence of ghost was recently proved factual at a small town in Illinois along witha its dead teenage superhero, when the heroes of Paris and by large France accidentally revealed they weren't adults at all, not even close, when Spiderman was unmasked to be 16-year-old Peter Parker, when the Young Justice was wounded in a large scale attack.

Most of the people involved and not involved are not having fun.

(This is inspired by the Miraculous fanfic The Growing Pains of Child Soldiers by BloodWolf13, a fic which I recommend you read since it is very, very good. Hits all my whump and angst points)

[ceescedasticity]

Dear fanfic authors,

It's "been through the wringer", not "been through the ringer".

A wringer:

[crow-caller]

Rearranges bookshelf as flatmate brought the entire skullduggery pleasant series home. And those lads take up a lot of space.

I've actually tried to prioritise a lot of books i like/have read for the mini shelf here, but there's a number I haven't read/may not like. Top shelf all bangers (also me books -_-)

[mariacallous]

[quackingcrow420]

I present to you, a story told in author's notes:

These are not from consecutive chapters, but yeah... I'm laughing at the version of me who started writing this a year and a half ago 😂 I HAD NO CLUE what I was getting into